Configure Social Commerce integration with Lotus Connections

Install > Installing or enabling additional software > Configure Social Commerce

Configure Social Commerce integration with Lotus Connections

There are several additional requirements to be met when installing a Lotus Connections environment that will work with WebSphere Commerce. Follow the steps on this page to address these additional requirements while installing and configuring Lotus Connections and Social Commerce.

Before you begin
To use Lotus Connections with WebSphere Commerce, the WebSphere Commerce installation must be configured to authenticate using an LDAP server and Single Sign On (SSO) must be enabled on the server. Configure Social Commerce gives you the opportunity to configure LDAP and SSO. Both are required for Lotus Connections to integrate with WebSphere Commerce.
LC_profiledir is used on this page in a similar way to WC_PROFILE, to represent the profiles directory on the WebSphere Application Server hosting Lotus Connections. The Profiles and Blogs applications can be deployed to different WebSphere Application Servers as part of a Lotus Connections installation. Because of this possibility, LC_profiledir may also have different values for Profiles and Blogs.

Procedure
Install Lotus Connections, following the instructions in the Lotus Connections Information Center.

Notes:

In order to provide blog, photo gallery and profiles capabilities, the Lotus Connections installation must contain the following three applications:

Blogs

Profiles

Homepage
Other servers can be installed, but they will not be used by the WebSphere Commerce integration.

When installing Lotus Connections, the installer prompts the user to Select a directory to use when searching for users. For Social Commerce to function correctly, the Profiles database must be selected. The LDAP server must only be used for Authentication but not when the Lotus Connections applications are looking for user data.

Lotus Connections must have Tivoli Directory Integrator included as part of the installation as well. See the following topics for information on how to configure and start the TDI Rest server:

Configure Tivoli Directory Integrator

Tivoli Directory Integrator technote

Do not start the TDI REST server at this time.

The restAdminUser and restAdminPassword must be set to enable the Creation of Profiles in Lotus Connections.

There are three mandatory iFixes, LO44560, LO43747 and LO43917, required to integrate with WebSphere Commerce. All three iFixes are available on the Lotus Greenhouse site. You will need to register for Lotus Greenhouse access.

Populate the Lotus Connections Profiles database with LDAP data

On the wizard's Profile Database Mapping screen, change the default mapping for the displayName field, guid field and email field. The guid Database field and the displayName field in the Profiles database must be mapped to the LDAP uid field. The email field must be set to null.
Configure editable fields in Profiles. Users need the ability to edit fields including preferredFirstName (screenname), email, location and interests to support the Social Commerce integration. By default, the email and preferredFirstName fields are not editable in Lotus Connections.
To make these fields editable:
Edit...

LC_profiledir\config\cells\cell_name\LotusConnections-config\profiles-config.xml
Add an <editableApiAttribute> element for email and preferredFirstName as children of the <apiModel> element, similar to the following example:
<apiconfiguration>
   
<apiModel profileType="default">
      ...
    
<editableApiAttribute>email</editableApiAttribute>
     
<editableApiAttribute>preferredFirstName</editableApiAttribute>
   
</apiModel>
</apiconfiguration>
Modify the <attribute> for email under <contactInformation> so that it becomes an <editableAttribute>, as shown in the following example:
<layoutConfiguration>
  
<profileLayout profileType="default">
    
<jobInformation>
      ...
    

     
<editableAttribute showLabel="true" 
                         hideIfEmpty="true" 
                         email="true" 
                         appendHtml="<br/&gt;">email</editableAttribute>      
      ...
  
</jobInformation>    
   ...
</layoutConfiguration>
Stop and restart the server hosting the Profiles feature.
The Lotus Connections administrator receives email notifications when there are draft entries created which require approval.
To set the email address for the administrative user:

Login to the Profiles interface as the administrative user.

Edit the profile of the administrative user.

Set a value for Office e-mail for the administrative user.

Save the changes to the profile.
No other users should have email addresses set for their profiles to avoid collisions in the Lotus Connections Profiles database.

Email addresses must be hidden from URLs in the Lotus Connections environment. Follow the steps in the Lotus Connections information centre on Hide e-mail addresses.

Confirm that the Profiles directory will be used when searching for users:

Open the following file in a text editor:

LC_profiledir\config\cells\cell_name\LotusConnections-config\LotusConnections-config.xml

Confirm that the value of the profiles_directory_service_extension_enabled attribute on the <sloc:serviceReference> element is true.
If the attribute value is not true, follow the instructions in the Enable Lotus Connections directory service extensions topic.

The Lotus Connection service adapters in the com.ibm.commerce.soccom.lc sMash application use the Lotus Connection Blogs and Profiles servers to communicate. One Lotus Connection service URL must be specified for each com.ibm.commerce.soccom.lc instance for Blogs and Profiles. Provide URLs for the Lotus Connection service adapter by Configure Social Commerce content provider information.
The following additional settings can be added to WC_INSTALL/components/social-commerce/config/adapter.config in order to control blogs and moderation:
# Lotus Connections - Should New Blogs have Moderated Posts (can be true or false)
/config/soccom/lc/moderatePosts = "true"

# Lotus Connections - Should New Blogs have Moderated Comments (can be true or false)
/config/soccom/lc/moderateComments = "true"
To configure Blog and Photo Gallery integration with Lotus Connections:
Open WC_INSTALL/components/social-commerce/config/adapter.config in a text editor.
Optional: Lotus Connections supports blog post moderation by giving certain users permissions to author Draft posts only. By default, blogs created by Social Commerce are owned by the administrative user specified in the configuration file. Users posting to a blog are added as contributors to the blog with Draft author permission. A new blog post is created in draft mode and the administrator must approve it before it appears to the public.
It is possible to turn this setting off by changing the moderatePosts flag. When the flag is set to false, additional authors are given full permissions on the blogs and new blog posts appear immediately without Administrator involvement:
# Lotus Connections - Should New Blogs have Moderated Posts (can be true or false)
/config/soccom/lc/moderatePosts = "false"
When the moderatePosts flag is changed, this only affects permissions for users added to blogs after the change.
To change the author permission for a user who has already posted to a specific blog, use the Lotus Connections Blogs User Interface. See the Lotus Connections documentation for additional details.
Optional: Lotus Connections supports moderating comments. By default, new blogs have moderated comments and a new comment must be approved by the Administrator before it appears to the public.
To make comments unmoderated, change the value of the moderateComments flag to false:
# Lotus Connections - Should New Blogs have Moderated Comments (can be true or false)
/config/soccom/lc/moderateComments = "false"
When the moderateComments flag is changed, it only affects blogs that created after the change. The settings for existing blogs can be changed through the Lotus Connections Blogs User Interface. See the Lotus Connections documentation for additional details.
All administration of blog posts and comments is performed by the Administrator using the Lotus Connections Blogs User Interface.
Lotus Connections does not have native support for Photo Galleries. Social Commerce implements Galleries by creating blogs whose entries contain photo content.
There are three settings of interest that are associated with the files uploaded to a blog:

Allowed Extensions

This setting provides a way to configure which extensions are permitted to be uploaded. Administrators should remove the non-image extensions doc and txt so that the value of this field is "jpg,jpeg,gif,png". This is the value expected by the Social Commerce integration.

Max Directory Size

This setting specifies the limit for the cumulative size of all files uploaded to the blogs component. After this limit is reached, no other photos uploads are permitted. Administrators should strongly consider increasing the size of this setting from the default 4MB.

Max File Size

This setting specifies the maximum size permitted for each file that is uploaded to the blog.

To configure these settings in Lotus Connections, follow the steps in the Specify site-wide setting for Blogs topic.
The Max File Size and Allowed Extensions settings can be added to the WC_INSTALL/components/social-commerce/config/adapter.config file. When you change these values in Lotus Connections, ensure that the corresponding line is also added to (or changed in) the adapter.config file:

Lotus Connections setting name Social Commerce adapter.config setting
Max File Size /config/soccom/default/capabilities/photoGallery/maxFileSize
Allowed Extensions /config/soccom/default/capabilities/photoGallery/imageFileTypes

Run the following command whenever you have made changes to the adapter.config file:

config_ant.sh -DinstanceName=instance -buildfile ../components/common/xml/enableFeature.xml -DfeatureName=social-commerce UpdateAdapterConfig
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Lotus Connections setting name	Social Commerce adapter.config setting
Max File Size	/config/soccom/default/capabilities/photoGallery/maxFileSize
Allowed Extensions	/config/soccom/default/capabilities/photoGallery/imageFileTypes